Page:Oregon, her history, her great men, her literature.djvu/19

Rh The earliest account of Oregon was recorded in the great Book of Stone which lay buried under mountain and valley, prairie and seashore, to be opened and read, with the aid of pick-axe, microscope and retort. The stories in the book are full of meaning. They are illustrated with pictures printed, life size; and pressed between the flinty leaves are the perfectly-preserved evidences of life in earth and sea and air.



Among the first to open that part of the book which gives an account of Oregon, was the late Doctor Thomas Condon, professor of geology in three universities and at one time state geologist of Oregon. The stories he read from its pages were so interesting and instructive that he published them in a volume entitled "The Two Islands," later republished under the title of "Oregon Geology." In one of the stories Doctor Condon describes the first appearance of our greatest mountains as they might have been viewed from some elevation—possibly that ancient sea-bank, which we now call the Oregon Coast Range. He says:

"A colossal sea-dyke was slowly rising from the bed of the ocean, extending from what we call Lower California, through what is now Oregon and Washington, to the Aleutian Islands—a mere sea-dyke for a long time, only a barrier between continuous waters; then through other ages a ridge of elevated hills; then later one of the world's mountain wonders, the Cascade and Sierra Nevada Range."